No more compensation due World Trade Center developer: judge

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York property developer Larry Silverstein is not entitled to funds that insurers of his World Trade Center properties won from airlines over the attacks of September 11, 2001, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

Silverstein's World Trade Center Properties sued QBE International Insurance Ltd and other insurers in 2010, after they won a $1.2 billion settlement with airlines and airport security companies.

Silverstein had already settled his own claims against the insurers for more than $4 billion. He subsequently argued that the insurers, under the terms of their policies, were required to turn over whatever they recovered from the airlines.

In his ruling on Wednesday, however, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote that Silverstein's World Trade Center Properties had already been "fully compensated" by its insurers.

Hellerstein ruled similarly in July, when he decided Silverstein could not recover billions of dollars from airlines - including United Airlines, now United Continental Holdings Inc, and American Airlines and its parent AMR Corp - because the insurance companies had already compensated his company.

"I am fully familiar with the arguments raised by plaintiffs, and nothing plaintiffs have raised in their briefing in this case or any other case has persuaded me to change my holdings," Hellerstein wrote in the five-page ruling on Wednesday.

A spokesman for Silverstein declined to comment.

The case is World Trade Center Properties LLC et al v. Great Lakes Reinsurance (UK) PLC et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 10-cv-1642.